T-minus 3 days and Counting

My students and I leave for Eastern Europe in three short days. We will explore simplicity, striking out on our own, and meditate on the fragility of life. First a stay in Romanian village, Villae Populi, helping at an orphanage, seeing Bucharest, Ploesti and perhaps Brasav in Transylvania, then take the train to Krakow, Poland. There we will visit Auschwitz, and be still. We will meditate, write, and remember where we have come from and reflect on where we are going.

I think of one of my students who will not be with us. His grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz. She was going to meet us and her grandson in Krakow. She would have shared her story with us, and with her grandson. It would have been an honor to be a witness to such a story, of a grandmother who survived so much, before, during and after the Holocaust.

My student fell apart on a recent home visit. His girlfriend broke up with him and so, devastated, he got drunk, smoked pot and did coke to excess. His addictions are running rampant, and so he is now getting the help he needs at another placement for the next 50 or so days. He reminds me of one of my students that I lost to a drug overdose. I still haven’t and maybe never will get over losing her.

His voice is growing so strong, his sense of himself in a larger more important story growing equally strong. But his demons, so strong as well. He is the hero of his story, and has all the makings of a tragic hero. We are rooting for him, so personally invested in him now.

I will miss not having him with me overseas. My friend, my little brother. Such an empty spot, so rooted inside of me.
Indeed life is a fragile gift, and I am thankful for it. So full and so fragile, and hopefully so enduring; an undying hymn of praise.

Tupelo Press

Before too long I will hear news about which manuscripts were chosen by Tupelo Press during their open submission period this summer. Last year, I received a lovely and encouraging letter from Jeffrey Levine, and later became a semi-finalist in the ‘05 Dorset Prize competition.

Only time will tell if this is the closest I will ever get to getting the book out into the world. But for now, I must be obedient to the vision, and keep submitting.

BendFilm

Independent films all day with a friend, we laugh out loud about our recent zombie movie, our latest collaboration. We run into his theater buddies all over town. He is trying to convince me to try out for “The Full Monty” which will audition in March. He tells this to all of the friends we meet. Pressure’s on.

Before oyster shooters in the Deschutes Brewery, C. Thomas Howell walks by, looking at us, amused by our slow celebrity recognition radar. Then at dusk, we huddle next to a patio campfire at an outdoor cigar bar sipping whiskey on the rocks, talking about future creative projects, while sparks crackle and swirl into the unknown sky.

Family Weekend

We finally found a weekend away, camping at the nearby Prineville Reservoir. Fishing at dusk with no luck, wading in the rapidly cooling reservoir, mud castles, swordfights in the grass under a forest of Juniper trees. Campfires, S’mores and Yahtzee by candlelight. Jaedon, groans like a man who bets and loses on the ponies, while the dice crackle in their plastic cup, “How about a Yahtzee, already?”

Balls

Trinity has lost interest in throwing the baseball around for several weeks now. It’s all been about football. So this is our game of catch nowadays: Jaedon is my halfback/center. He hikes it, takes handoffs from me, and Trinity runs the receiver patterns that my stepfather taught me when I was Trinity’s age; the buttonhook, the streak, the square-out, the corner-fake-dipsy-do, the long bomb curl…

Trinity has soft hands for his age, his body movement is growing more in synch with where he wants it to go, and Jaedon gleefully tackles the hell out of him on the lawn.
Meanwhile, I still carry Beth’s baseball with me in my backpack.